Things That You Should Know About Spam What is Spam? Spam is basically Junk Mail that you get in your inbox and the e-mail could be to try to sell a person an item or to get money from them and the person selling this item is anonymous. It is also used to get people’s private and personal info like bank accounts and their e-mail address.
Different Types of Spam - E-mail Spam: Junk E-mail or unwanted mail. It’s also an “industry of e-mail address harvesting.” Even if the person were to just open the e-mail and if it’s from a spammer, then it will also let in a virus into your computer. The spammer can then get into your personal information and also collect your e-mail address. “Harvesters may also use web bots, programs that will search for e-mail addresses on Internet white pages, job postings, newsgroups, chat rooms – even personal Web pages.”
Instant Messaging: Spammers make use of the instant messaging systems and since it tends to not be blocked firewalls, it’s a very useful channel for them.
Newsgroup and Forum: It’s a type of spam “where the targets are Usenet newsgroups.” It’s an excessive multiple posing of the same message. The forum spam is when spammers create messages for advertisement like weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, etc.
Mobile Phone: The type of spam that is directed by a text message, which, for customers, can be very annoying because the fee may be charged per text message that had been received.
Online Game Messaging: On the online games where someone can message another person by chat rooms or public discussions, spammers use these to try to get a person to buy an item for the game, but for REAL money.
Spam Targeting Search Engines (Spamdexing): “Involves a number of methods like repeating unrelated phrases to manipulate the relevance of resources indexed by a search engine.” A search engine uses a variety of algorithms to find relevant rankings. “For example, the search bots will detect repeated keywords as spamming by using a grammar analysis. If a website owner is found to have spammed the webpage to falsely increase its page rank, the website may be penalized by search engines.”
Blog, Wiki, and Guestbook: Blog spams occur on web blogs and some remove comments that were made on the blog posts to advertise a link to a website that would lead to the spammer’s commercial website.
Spam Targeting Video Sharing Sites: Some of the video sharing sites, like YouTube, are being targeted by spammers to use certain techniques like “using bots to post messages on random users' profiles to a spam account's channel page, along with enticing text and images, usually of a sexually suggestive nature.” When they use these techniques, the spammers are trying to get people to go to their link. Another way of video spam is when the spammer gives a video popular a name and saying what’s it about so that people will view it. The title of this video spams are false and are unrelated to what is being shown in the video.
Besides being annoying what are the dangers associated with spam? Some dangers associated with spam are spammers stealing personal info, databases, and e-mail address, send a virus to your computer, and also try to sell you an item either for an online game for REAL money or send a false advertisement for weight loss and more.
How can you protect yourself, and what can you do if you get spammed? There are many ways where one can protect their self from spam. One of the ways is to create a firewall, which is like a security system so that things like spam won’t be able to get through to your computer. Another way of avoiding spam is to be careful when you give out your e-mail address to another person, even if it is a friend of yours or someone you know because you never if they would use it for something like spam. A person could also set up an e-mail address that’s hard to figure out and “research shows that people with such names get less spam.” One other way to avoid it is by deleting junk mail without opening it because with some junk mail, even from opening it can alert spammers. Don’t reply to spam either unless you know that the source comes from an actual company or website. Real companies will not ask for your personal info, so if an e-mail from a company asks you for it, it’s most likely that the person is trying to trick you into giving out info like your credit card number or bank account. In that case, just delete the message and DO NOT give out your personal information. Be careful when an e-mail come with an attachment because even if it is someone that you know, but you can’t confirm what the attachment is, do not open it.
The potential impact spam may have on your privacy, safety and freedom of speech. Spam can very well impact your privacy, safety, and freedom of speech. In privacy, spammers can get people to tell them their personal info by making them fill out something like an info sheet for a game online or even make it look like an e-mail from a company that you trust like the bank. If that personal info is given out, the spammer can take that info and steal money from you if you had given them your credit card or bank account number. It affects your safety as well because if you are online and talking in a chat room with someone that you don’t even know, that person could be taking your e-mail address. And if that person says that they would like to meet you, that’s very dangerous because you don’t even know them and you don’t what kind of person they are, what their age is, or anything about them. You can’t really share freedom of speech either because, again, you don’t who’s listening in on you.
How do you protect you Facebook account, your cell phone, your iPod/iPad/iTouch from spam? For Facebook, to protect yourself from someone trying to log into your page, you can change your password. However, make sure that it’s something that includes letters AND numbers so that they won’t be able to crack it so easily. Another thing is to not give out your password to anyone else because you don’t if they will go onto your page and create a virus in it. The same goes for your e-mail; just make an e-mail that’s really hard to get. Something that you can do for your cell phone is “creating an alias address rather than using the cell phone's number as a text message address.” That would mean that the messages would only be “sent to the alias are delivered; messages sent to the phone's number are discarded.” For things like the iPod/iPad/iTouch you can avoid things like not clicking on the pop-ups that appear or any type of random message that you don’t recognize who it is from.
What is Spam?
Spam is basically Junk Mail that you get in your inbox and the e-mail could be to try to sell a person an item or to get money from them and the person selling this item is anonymous. It is also used to get people’s private and personal info like bank accounts and their e-mail address.
Different Types of Spam -
E-mail Spam: Junk E-mail or unwanted mail. It’s also an “industry of e-mail address harvesting.” Even if the person were to just open the e-mail and if it’s from a spammer, then it will also let in a virus into your computer. The spammer can then get into your personal information and also collect your e-mail address. “Harvesters may also use web bots, programs that will search for e-mail addresses on Internet white pages, job postings, newsgroups, chat rooms – even personal Web pages.”
Instant Messaging: Spammers make use of the instant messaging systems and since it tends to not be blocked firewalls, it’s a very useful channel for them.
Newsgroup and Forum: It’s a type of spam “where the targets are Usenet newsgroups.” It’s an excessive multiple posing of the same message. The forum spam is when spammers create messages for advertisement like weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, etc.
Mobile Phone: The type of spam that is directed by a text message, which, for customers, can be very annoying because the fee may be charged per text message that had been received.
Online Game Messaging: On the online games where someone can message another person by chat rooms or public discussions, spammers use these to try to get a person to buy an item for the game, but for REAL money.
Spam Targeting Search Engines (Spamdexing): “Involves a number of methods like repeating unrelated phrases to manipulate the relevance of resources indexed by a search engine.” A search engine uses a variety of algorithms to find relevant rankings. “For example, the search bots will detect repeated keywords as spamming by using a grammar analysis. If a website owner is found to have spammed the webpage to falsely increase its page rank, the website may be penalized by search engines.”
Blog, Wiki, and Guestbook: Blog spams occur on web blogs and some remove comments that were made on the blog posts to advertise a link to a website that would lead to the spammer’s commercial website.
Spam Targeting Video Sharing Sites: Some of the video sharing sites, like YouTube, are being targeted by spammers to use certain techniques like “using bots to post messages on random users' profiles to a spam account's channel page, along with enticing text and images, usually of a sexually suggestive nature.” When they use these techniques, the spammers are trying to get people to go to their link. Another way of video spam is when the spammer gives a video popular a name and saying what’s it about so that people will view it. The title of this video spams are false and are unrelated to what is being shown in the video.
Besides being annoying what are the dangers associated with spam?
Some dangers associated with spam are spammers stealing personal info, databases, and e-mail address, send a virus to your computer, and also try to sell you an item either for an online game for REAL money or send a false advertisement for weight loss and more.
How can you protect yourself, and what can you do if you get spammed?
There are many ways where one can protect their self from spam. One of the ways is to create a firewall, which is like a security system so that things like spam won’t be able to get through to your computer. Another way of avoiding spam is to be careful when you give out your e-mail address to another person, even if it is a friend of yours or someone you know because you never if they would use it for something like spam. A person could also set up an e-mail address that’s hard to figure out and “research shows that people with such names get less spam.” One other way to avoid it is by deleting junk mail without opening it because with some junk mail, even from opening it can alert spammers. Don’t reply to spam either unless you know that the source comes from an actual company or website. Real companies will not ask for your personal info, so if an e-mail from a company asks you for it, it’s most likely that the person is trying to trick you into giving out info like your credit card number or bank account. In that case, just delete the message and DO NOT give out your personal information. Be careful when an e-mail come with an attachment because even if it is someone that you know, but you can’t confirm what the attachment is, do not open it.
The potential impact spam may have on your privacy, safety and freedom of speech.
Spam can very well impact your privacy, safety, and freedom of speech. In privacy, spammers can get people to tell them their personal info by making them fill out something like an info sheet for a game online or even make it look like an e-mail from a company that you trust like the bank. If that personal info is given out, the spammer can take that info and steal money from you if you had given them your credit card or bank account number. It affects your safety as well because if you are online and talking in a chat room with someone that you don’t even know, that person could be taking your e-mail address. And if that person says that they would like to meet you, that’s very dangerous because you don’t even know them and you don’t what kind of person they are, what their age is, or anything about them. You can’t really share freedom of speech either because, again, you don’t who’s listening in on you.
How do you protect you Facebook account, your cell phone, your iPod/iPad/iTouch from spam?
For Facebook, to protect yourself from someone trying to log into your page, you can change your password. However, make sure that it’s something that includes letters AND numbers so that they won’t be able to crack it so easily. Another thing is to not give out your password to anyone else because you don’t if they will go onto your page and create a virus in it. The same goes for your e-mail; just make an e-mail that’s really hard to get. Something that you can do for your cell phone is “creating an alias address rather than using the cell phone's number as a text message address.” That would mean that the messages would only be “sent to the alias are delivered; messages sent to the phone's number are discarded.” For things like the iPod/iPad/iTouch you can avoid things like not clicking on the pop-ups that appear or any type of random message that you don’t recognize who it is from.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_spam
Msn. Safety of Spam. Msn, 2005. Print.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uDwHAfni3S8/TRsACS9hOuI/AAAAAAAAAHs/IRmTZxbcvEU/s1600/spam.jpg
http://static.commentcamarche.net/en.kioskea.net/faq/images/0-8l6KWioM-securityhoaxemail-s-.png